Housing Developments
| Published: 19th February 2008 11:05 |
Housing development - a startling refusal
Armed with the 2,000 responses that many of you have sent about the proposed housing development, I contacted the consultants who are assessing the proposals, and asked them for a meeting to put the factual issues that so many of you have raised. Startlingly, they replied that they are under strict instructions from their clients not to talk to any local politicians. They give two reasons: first,they are looking only at the technical aspects (such as impact on traffic), so don't want to hear about political considerations;
second, as so many people in Broxtowe have objected, it might bias the result if they listened to all our points.
This seems to me completely unacceptable. Obviously a
technical consultant doesn't want to sit through some sort of political harangue. But the consultants are coming in from London and assessing dozens of different locations in a few weeks. People who live locally are aware of technical issues - traffic, flooding,
infrastructure, water courses, and more - which we need to be sure they're aware of. Otherwise, projects might get to the detailed planning stage with basic flaws overlooked. It's part of my job as a politician to represent people's concerns, including technical
issues, and I'm frankly not willing to accept that the unelected Nottingham Regeneration Limited (which is a company set up by all the local councils to do this sort of study) should be able to exclude elected representatives from the technical assessment stage.
And as for the argument that listening to the issues that I raise might bias the outcome, it's open to other MPs and their constituents to raise concerns too. It's really not our fault if some of them don't - perhaps because they have less reason for concern than we do?
Do you agree? If so, may I ask you to write to NRL to say so,simply asking them to listen to the practical points I would like to make on your behalf?
Their address is:
Nottingham Regeneration Limited, Shire Hall, High Pavement, Nottingham NG1 1HN
Nick Palmer (Labour MP) Broxtowe - extract from Nick's latest newsletter.
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